As the financial crisis has evolved its moral has been simplified, grotesquely. In the beginning this crisis was messy. Wall Street financiers behaved horribly but so did ordinary Americans. Millions of people borrowed money they shouldn’t have borrowed and, not, typically, because they were duped or defrauded but because they were covetous and greedy: they wanted to own stuff they hadn’t earne…

On the recommendation of colleague and fellow history geek Dave Flick, I’m reading (via Kindle, which makes it extra-geeky) What Hath God Wrought , David Walker Howe’s compelling examination of early 19th Century America.

President Obama has described his economic recovery program as a stool with a number of legs. One of them is the stimulus package; another the attempt to stabilize the housing market by helping homeowners in trouble with their mortgages; another is the massive amounts of money the Federal Reserve is pumping into the secondary lending market; and yet another is the Treasury department’s small bu…

Latvia’s government fell last month following violent street protests. Hungary’s premier Ferenc Gyurcsany resigned last week after struggling to impose austerity measures required under the terms of a $25bn (�17bn) bail-out from the International Monetary Fund.